Hi, I’m Jeff Starr, a sitar student and filmmaker. This is my interview with Chris Stephens, an American who has been playing sitar for 15 years. You will hear a 1 minute clip of his playing before we discuss learning the sitar.

Aside from occasional lessons with Ustad Imrat Khan, Chris is primarily self taught. He is extremely dedicated to Hindustani music and has spent countless hours learning about its deep intricacies.

Frequently I am asked, “Can I teach myself to play sitar” and, “I can’t find a teacher, should I even bother trying to learn sitar on my own?”

Well, thanks to YouTube, I have met many amazing sitar players from all over the world. One of them is Manjit Singh. After he and I chatted a bit he offered to shoot a video talking about his experience learning the sitar on his own and teaching himself.

So, if you want to learn sitar but you can’t find a teacher, let Manjit serve as an inspiration.

As many of you already know, sitar is really hard to play!

Raga Yaman Alap is something I have been slowly learning over the years. For the past few months my teacher has been having me focus a lot of Gat and Taans. Then over the past few weeks we started spending more time during my lesson discussing and playing Alap.

Since I was traveling this week I figured I would shoot a video playing alap to document my current progress compared to the previous videos I have posted. You can see those in the links below. I hope I am getting better. Leave a comment and let me know what you think.

My teacher said that he booked me for a sitar performance in NYC this December!

I am stressing out! Back in November 2015 I had my first public performance. I was background music for an event at the Pakistan Mission to The United Nations. It was an honor to be invited to play there, but I was REALLY nervous about it.

In tonight’s video I reflect on that performance, where I am now with my training and I show a super old clip from 2012, after I had taken my third sitar lesson. I’ve come a long way since then!